I started practicing mindfulness meditation five years ago, when
I was an English teacher living in Seoul, South Korea.

I'd sit cross-legged and try to concentrate on my breath like the
books told me to.

Then something frustrating would happen: Rather than resting in
tranquility, I'd be thinking — about lunch, about the classes I'd
teach that day, about the fight I'd had with my soon-to-be
ex-girlfriend.

Those thoughts would trigger further thoughts, like, Why the
hell can't I stop thinking? and, This meditation stuff
is stupid and will never work because my mind is more out of
control than I ever imagined.

Then I read a book that would change the way I thought about
thoughts for the rest of my life: "Zen Action: Zen Person" by T.P. Kasulis,
a cross-cultural philosopher at Ohio State University.

The book is the best
introduction to Zen Buddhism I've come across.

In it, Kasulis makes the point
that meditation isn't about ridding the mind of every thought.
Rather, it's about changing the way we relate to
thoughts.

The mechanics are pretty
simple: When sitting in a meditative posture, I'd focus my
attention on the sensations generated by my breath. Then, when I
inevitably got lost in the chatter of thoughts, I'd label that as
"thinking" and go back to concentrating on my
breath.

Slowly, a big change started to
happen.

Instead of seeing my thoughts
as something to run from or capture, they could be something I
simply observed. And if I observed them long enough, even the
most tantalizing or infuriating of thoughts — a pretty face, a
debt owed — would float away.

And my mind, lo and behold,
would become stable, even tranquil.

Put into psychological language, that sort of mindfulness
practice is an exercise in "metacognition," or an awareness of
what you're thinking about.

Now that I write about business
for a living, I'm delighted to see that mindfulness is becoming a
part of more people's working lives.

If you just sit and
observe, you will see how restless your mind is
... If you try to calm it, it only makes things
worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room
to hear more subtle things — that's when your intuition starts to
blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the
present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous
expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see
before. It's a discipline; you have to practice
it."

When I was sitting on the
cushion five years ago getting frustrated with myself for
thinking, I was making what I came to realize was a very basic —
and perhaps very common — assumption about how mindfulness
meditation is supposed to work. Since then, my
mindfulness practice has come up a lot in conversation, and I've
heard from a lot of people that they "can't meditate" because
they can't stop themselves from thinking.

The key is not to stop the
thoughts, but to acknowledge them. They'll float away on their
own.